The Tempi valley section on the Athens- Thessaloniki national motorway
will reopen permanently on Saturday, 8 May, and more specifically as of
midnight Friday.

According to an announcement by the contractor company "Aegean
Motorway", the toll stations that had remained closed for the duration
of the restoration work will also reopen. The works have been completed
successfully before schedule. During the 14-week period of repairs and
upgrades, 40 alpinists cleared over 2000 tons of rocks and installed
2.8km of protective fences, 5,000 sqm of netting and the helicopter
operating over the valley to aid acceleration of the works performed
over 100 hours of flight.

ANA-MPA/The International Monetary Fund (IMF) Board will meet on Sunday
to decide on the financial support to Greece, IMF external relations
department director Caroline Atkinson said Thursday in Washington
during a press briefing.

She said the measures to be implemented by Greece and the EU/IMF
financial support are "aimed to help the Greek economy- to support it
with this difficult adjustment and to focus on addressing the two
problems that the Greek economy has been suffering from -on debt and
competitiveness-- and put the economy back onto a path of strong,
sustainable growth with jobs and employment down the road", and
stressed that default was "not on the table".

"We are impressed by the determination of the Greek authorities,
themselves, to carry through this difficult plan. Obviously, this is a
very challenging situation, but we have seen a lot of determination
from the authorities behind this plan," she added.

Replying to questions, Atkinson said the IMF disagreed with speculation
that the bailout package cannot prevent Greece from defaulting on its
debts. "Our view is that, that is quite wrong," she stressed.

"We have deliberately designed a package of financial support that
gives Greece the ability to stay out of the markets for more than 18
months until 2012. If implemented, the package of the adjustments will
address and it addresses both the fiscal issue and the competitiveness
issue with structural reforms, and will put Greece, we believe, in a
position to fully pay its debts as well as partly by allowing down the
road growth, renewed growth in the Greek economy," Atkinson explained.

Car registrations (including both new and used ones) rose 8.9 pct in
the first four months of 2010, compared with the corresponding period
last year, after a decline of 40.3 pct recorded in the January-April
period in 2009, the Hellenic Statistical Authority said on Thursday.

The statistics agency, in a report, said car registrations totaled
90,645 vehicles (new and used) in the four-month period, while
registration of new motorcycles fell 2.6 pct to 17,774 over the same
period.

Equity prices were declining at the opening of trade on Friday on the
Athens Stock Exchange (ASE), with the basic share price index down 2.37
percent, standing at 1,638.71 points at 11:15 am, and turnover at
28.089 million euros.

Individual sector indices were moving mostly downward, with the only
gains in Insurance, up 0.72 percent.

The biggest losses were in Health, down 5.25 percent; and Banks, down
3.35 percent.

The FTSE/ASE 20 index for blue chip and heavily traded stocks was down
3.49 percent, the FTSE/ASE MID 40 index was down 2.55 percent, and the
FTSE/ASE-80 small cap index was down 1.38 percent.

The expulsions of MPs from ruling PASOK main opposition New Democracy
(ND) for disobeying party orders in the vote on the austerity measures
bill, and the violent incidents that occurred in downtown Athens during
a protest against the measures in which three bank employees died when
their bank was torched, dominated the headlines on Friday in Athens'
newspapers.